Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Revisiting the Conceptualisation of the Employer Brand Phenomenon: The Brand Equity Approach
Selin Cetinkaya Kudret, King‘s College London, UK
Introduction
It dates back less than two decades that human resources and marketing practitioners discovered the name of the
employer acting as a brand, which was already embedded in the organisation, once the organisation began hiring people
for accomplishment of its organisational objectives. The extant literature is in its infancy yet in conceptually and
empirically investigating the employer brand (EB) concept.
Despite of the fact, there a number of robust theories in marketing; organisational behaviour (OB) and human resources
(HR) literatures endorsing the background for conceptually and empirically investigating this interdisciplinary
phenomenon. Resource-based view (Barney, 1991) sheds light to the rationale behind branding the employment
experience in the sense that if positioned as an intangible asset, EB serves to provide the organisation with the
competitive advantage over its rivals (Aaker, 1989; Barney, 1991; Porter, 1990) competing to attract, engage and retain
the qualified human capital possessing transferrable skills, which is the subject of the fierce global competition in the
workforce market (Chambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin, & Michaels III, 1998). Brand equity tenets and
branding literature facilitates investigation of the EB phenomenon like a product/service/experience to be branded to
external and internal stakeholders (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Keller, 1993, 2001). Social identity theory taps to the
organisational identity, which is an integral part of the EB, and captures organisational identity‘s importance in
explaining employee‘s identification with the employing organisation (Alvesson, 1990; Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Dutton,
Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Edwards, 2005). Recruitment literature investigates the concept of employer attractiveness
along with the instrumental and symbolic organisational personality attributes as antecedents of attractiveness; and
scrutinises the employer brand image that fall into the range of the EB phenomenon as well (Cable & Turban, 2003;
Ewing, Pitt, de Bussy, & Berthon, 2002; Knox & Freeman, 2006; Lievens, 2007; Lievens & Highhouse, 2003; Lievens,
Hoye, & Schreurs, 2005; Lievens, Van Hoye, & Anseel, 2007). Psychological contract theory unveils the mutual tacit
deal between the employee and employer, which is a derivative of perceived subjective states and contemporary
contextual dynamics and by doing so, contributes to EB literature (Guest, 1998a, 1998b; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994;
Rousseau, 1989; Rousseau & Tijoriwala, 1998).
Apparently the aforementioned extant literature taps different dimensions of the EB from their own perspectives. The
purpose of this work is introducing a holistic and novel approach to conceptualisation of the phenomenon, further
research shall enable empirical exhibition of employer brand‘s organisational and financial outcomes.
Critical Review of the Extant Literature
Conceptualisations and definitions of EB construct in the extant literature were reviewed from following perspectives:
To what extent they reflect the rationale behind the phenomenon, which addresses the shifting dynamics of the
global human capital market (the depth of the concept);
To what extent they reflect the exchange relationship entailing mutual stakes between employer, employees and
prospective employees (the pragmatic aspect); and
To what extent they tap the dimensions of this interdisciplinary phenomenon (the breadth of the concept).
It is evident that there is a prominent emphasis on the benefits for the employee side in the extant EB literature, with a
few explanations recognising contribution of organisational associations (the breadth) and the reciprocal nature of the
phenomenon entailing mutual stakes (pragmatic aspect).
Considering the aforementioned perspectives underpinning the critical review, one can address the following gaps in
conceptualisation and definition of the EB phenomenon:
Gaps in Reflecting the Rationale behind the Phenomenon: Shifting Dynamics of the Human Capital Market
Towards the beginning of the 21
50
st century, the rapid advance of technology; relatively free flow of capital, people and
information around the world; and the exacerbating increase in the number of ageing people financed by the current
work force, gave rise to a stand-still in the supply of the qualified human capital, who keeps pace with the rapidly
changing business roles by developing transferrable competencies, while the demand for this special type of work force
is rising (Chambers, et al., 1998). As the world is turning to be a huge single market of every kind of demand and
supply, including that for the human capital, the state of opportunities lead employees to seek for diverse employment
experiences, which is only possible for them by adapting their competencies from one role and market to another. Those,
who can meet this challenge, would be better off by taking the control of their own career development instead of
seeking for life-long employment at a single organisation. This shift is marked by the literature with the old vs. new
psychological contract (Cavanaugh & Raymond, 1999). The main thrust of the war for human capital and the subsequent